Which IDEs are good

There are a number of integrated development environments (IDEs) available for editing PHP - from the most humble such as Windows Notepad, to the all-powerful Zend Studio for Eclipse. Popular languages in use by professional system developers, such as C++, Java, or FORTRAN, benefit from powerful IDEs that provide tools and help that make a programmers life easier. All too often PHP programmers do not realise that a plain vanilla text editor is not the best thing for them - many developers even think it is cool to use a basic text tool, which is holding back the heights the language can reach.

There are several features I believe are key to helping programmers better understand their scripts - if you feel you do not need some of these, that is fine because everyone has different requirements. However, if you want to benefit the most from all the hard work that people are doing, you should try to check off which of these features your PHP editor provides, and see what you are missing.